Love is a very strong emotion, but unlike the beliefs of many, love does not always win. There are sometimes factors in people’s lives that are stronger than love. Louisa Ellis, a character in the short story “A New England Nun” is proof of this. While her fiancé Joe is away trying to make the fortune so that he can come back and marry her, Louisa falls into a particular routine. For fourteen years she follows her own routine. When Joe comes back, she is a changed person. In Mary Wilkins Freeman’s short story “A New England Nun,” Louisa becomes so set in her ways that she cannot change, even for love.
In the first part of the story, the reader is shown just how set in her ways Louisa really is. Louisa did everything to perfection. None of …show more content…
Although Louisa wasn’t delighted that she and Joe split up, she was glad that she would not have to change her life. “Standing in the door, holding each other’s hands, a last great wave of regretful memory swept over them” (608). Not even love could help Louisa shed her fear of change nor want to change her ways. The thought of another disturbing her peaceful time haunted her. “She had visions, so startling that she half repudiated them as indelicate, of coarse masculine belongings strewn about in endless litter; of dust and disorder arising necessarily from a coarse masculine presence in the midst of all this delicate harmony” (604). Louisa over the years had placed herself unknowingly in a world where no one could accompany her. “Louisa’s feet had turned into a path, smooth maybe under a calm, serene sky, but so straight and unswerving that it could only meet check at her grave, and so narrow that there was no room for anyone at her side” (602).
Louisa did love Joe, but she also knew that she could never change. “She simply said that while she had no cause of complaint against him, she had lived so long in one way that she shrank from making a change” (608). Louisa had two choices, either marry Joe and change or give up his love to live alone. Joe gives her the perfect “out” when she overhears his conversation with Lily. She knows that Joe and Lily will love one another and that Lily will make him a “proper wife.” As critic Perry Westerbrook says, “Louisa prompted mainly be her reluctance to change her way of life, releases him”
In the first part of the story, the reader is shown just how set in her ways Louisa really is. Louisa did everything to perfection. None of …show more content…
Although Louisa wasn’t delighted that she and Joe split up, she was glad that she would not have to change her life. “Standing in the door, holding each other’s hands, a last great wave of regretful memory swept over them” (608). Not even love could help Louisa shed her fear of change nor want to change her ways. The thought of another disturbing her peaceful time haunted her. “She had visions, so startling that she half repudiated them as indelicate, of coarse masculine belongings strewn about in endless litter; of dust and disorder arising necessarily from a coarse masculine presence in the midst of all this delicate harmony” (604). Louisa over the years had placed herself unknowingly in a world where no one could accompany her. “Louisa’s feet had turned into a path, smooth maybe under a calm, serene sky, but so straight and unswerving that it could only meet check at her grave, and so narrow that there was no room for anyone at her side” (602).
Louisa did love Joe, but she also knew that she could never change. “She simply said that while she had no cause of complaint against him, she had lived so long in one way that she shrank from making a change” (608). Louisa had two choices, either marry Joe and change or give up his love to live alone. Joe gives her the perfect “out” when she overhears his conversation with Lily. She knows that Joe and Lily will love one another and that Lily will make him a “proper wife.” As critic Perry Westerbrook says, “Louisa prompted mainly be her reluctance to change her way of life, releases him”